The Boston Cicero, John Adams called him; but his writings in the patriot cause were as fervent as his orations. Scholar and law reporter, he helped defend Richardson and the troops when no one else would. (See Nos.
59,
63,
64.) He died of tuberculosis at the age of thirty-one; Stuart painted this portrait fifty years later, “after studying family portraits and prints, and the result was considered a good likeness.” Lawrence Park,
Gilbert Stuart 2:628 (New York, 1926).